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Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson (Part 1)

‘The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.’ – Apple’s “Think Different” commercial, 1997

Introduction. How This Book Came to Be. The author has published other famous biographies. Steve was an incredibly intense guy. He launched his ‘Think Different’ campaign. Steve was an extremely persistent guy. In 2009, he had to go on medical leave due to his cancer. Finally, Steve approached the author and wanted a biography. Thankfully, he was also brutally honest. Steve changed 6 of the following industries: ‘personal computers, animated movie, music, phones, tablet computing and digital publishing.’ He is the epitome of innovation and invention. Think differently.

I always thought of myself as a humanities person as a kid, but I liked electronics. Then I read something that one of my heroes, Edwin Land of Polaroid, said about the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of humanities and sciences, and I decided that’s what I wanted to do. – Steve Jobs

Chapter One: Childhood

Abandoned and Chosen

The Adoption. Paul Jobs was a mechanic and dated Clara Hagopian. Eventually, they got married. He was a calm and gentlemen. Eventually, Paul settled on being a used car salesman. Due to Clara being unable to conceive, 9 years after their marriage, they looked to adopt a child. Joanne was pregnant, but only wanted her child to be adopted by college graduates. Another couple rejected Steve Jobs as they initially wanted a girl. Steve got adopted by Paul and Clara eventually. He was named ‘Steven Paul Jobs’. Steve was aware from young that he was adopted. His parents assured him that he was the chosen one and was ‘selected’ and not abandoned. Because of this, Steve had the strong urge to be independent. Later in life, Steve also abandoned another kid (Lisa). Even in his life, he occasionally acted cruel to others. This stemmed from his tumultuous past. He saw Paul and Clara as his true parents, not the biological ones. Paul exposed Steve to mechanics and cars when young and Steve didn’t really like mechanical work. His dad thought him to do things right. Steve liked hanging out with Paul. However, it was electronics which got Steve very interested in. He was inspired by the housing designs by Eichler. Paul tried being a real estate agent but failed. Steve admired his desire to try. Paul had a very respectable and resolute character.The tech industry at Stanford University was very big.Intel moved from memory chips to microprocessors. Moore’s Law. Steve Jobs was inspired by how developed Silicon Valley was. Steve soon realized that his parents didn’t know everything and that he could be smarter than them eventually. Paul was very good at mechanical stuff. His parents accommodated for that fact. Steve hated reading and studying in school and did not respect authority. Often, he played pranks and got into trouble. To his parents, the school was at fault for failing to stimulate his interest. A teacher used bribes to make him do homework and it worked. The teacher known as Imogene Hill changed his life. Soon, he became to change and even do work without the bribes being present. He managed to skip a grade. However, he found it hard to interact with kids older than him. He was often bullied in school. Eventually he dropped out of school. He was also appreciative of organic fruits and vegetables. Steve Jobs hated church and never wanted to go back. Instead, he spent time studying and practicing the tenets of Zen Buddhism. Steve was fascinated when he saw that a calf could walk a few minutes after it was born. Soon, his pranks involved electronics. His parents instilled in him the fact that he could anything easily. The first PC he fell in love with was the HP 9100A. Soon, Steve worked in an assembly line for frequency counters. Steve also worked as a newspaper delivery boy. Since young, he had an entrepreneurial spirit. He got his first car at 15. He was fascinated by paying for something with his own savings. In that same year, he tried marijuana. He didn’t give up on that so quickly. Steve had an artistic side to him and listened to music, read Shakespeare etc. Jobs never respected authority and was deeply rebellious in nature.

Steve Jobs was usually off in a corner doing something on his own and really didn’t want to have much of anything to do with either me or the rest of the class. – John McCollum

Knowing I was adopted may have made me feel more independent, but I have never felt abandoned. I’ve always felt special. My parents made me feel special. – Steve Jobs

I love it when you can bring really great design and simple capability to something that doesn’t cost much. – Steve Jobs

Both my parents got me. They felt a lot of responsibility once they sensed I was special. They found ways to keep feeding me stuff and putting me in better schools. They were willing to defer to my needs. – Steve Jobs

I encountered authority of a different kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did not like it. And they really almost got me. They came close to really beating any curiosity out of me. – Steve Jobs, on his high school teachers

Odd Couple. This was the time Steve met Stephen Wozniak. Stephen was one of the top students and was very geeky. His dad was Francis Wozniak, a graduate from Cal Tech. Woz’s father explained a lot of electronic stuff to him when young. In a business sense, Woz was not brought up to be as ambitious as Steve. Woz spent a lot of time assembling stuff and reading electronic journals. He started building calculators. He was an extreme hardware guy who often played pranks on others. Similar to Steve, Woz was quite a loner at school. They both shared passion for music, esp from Bob Dylan. Their pranks included screwing the tv signals, so that it became difficult for their friends to watch TV. Woz designed a digital Blue Box from scratch. It was incredible. It worked and they could make overseas call for free by replicating the phone company’s signals. They even pretended to be Henry Kissinger and tried calling the Pope at Vatican City. Soon, they were thinking of marketing the Blue Box for cash. This Blue Box Adventure marked their success working together.

I remember him telling me that engineering was the highest level of importance you could reach in the world. It takes society to a new level. – Steve Wozniak

My dad believed in honesty. Extreme honesty. That’s the biggest thing he taught me. I never lie, even to this day. – Steve Wozniak

We had so much in common. Typically, it was really hard for me to explain to people what kind of design stuff I worked on, but Steve got it right away. And I liked him. He was kind of skinny and iry and full of energy. – Stephen Wozniak

Woz was the first person I’d met who knew more electronics than I did. I liked him right away. I was a little more mature than my years, and he was a little less mature than his, so it evened out. Woz was very bright, but emotionally he was my age. – Steve Jobs

The Blue Box adventure established a template for a partnership that would soon be born. Wozniak would be the gentle wizard coming up with a neat invention that he would have been happy just to give away, and Jobs would figure out how to make it user-friendly, put it together in a package, market it, and make a few bucks. – Walter Isaacson

The Dropout ‘Turn On, Tune in’. Chrisann Brennan was Steve’s first girlfriend. She was still a minor at that time. Steve’s crazy antics was what made him attractive. Steve introduced Brennan to marijuana. Steve also listened to Bach music at that time. He was a guy who was cruel sometimes to her. Patience was never one of Steve’s virtues. He was 17 and it was time to go to college. However, at times, he did not even want to go. All along, he wanted to do something which was both artistic and interesting. He insisted on going to Reed College. Eventually he got admitted to the school. Sometimes, he hurt his parent’s feelings and regretted engaging in such actions. Another of Steve’s friends was a guy named Daniel Kottke. Both of them were vegetarians. Steve soon met Robert Friedland. He was like a drug dealer. Robert also believed in enlightenment. Steve often stared at other people. It was like a reality distortion field to be able to mix with Robert Friedland. Robert taught Steve how to market himself and start selling stuff. Eventually, Steve realized Robert was a con man and lost respect for him. He was a gold miner. At Reed, Steve was bored of the classes he was forced to take. Since the college education was very expensive and it was not beneficial, he decided to drop out. Steve had a very curious mind. Soon, he attended a calligraphy class. He learnt about serif and sans serif typefaces and typography. His font was soon to be used in the Macs. Windows had it as well. Steve credited drugs for making him more enhanced.

Taking LSD (Acid) was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important – creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could. – Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs refused to go to the classes he was assigned and instead went to the ones he wanted, such as a dance class where he could enjoy both the creativity and the chance to meet girls. – Walter Isaacson

I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out okay. – Steve Jobs

Atari and India

Zen and the Art of Game Design. Atari was a game manufacturer. The founder was Nolan Bushnell. Alcorn was the chief engineer at Atrari. He was impressed by Steve’s work attitude. Steve refused to leave Atari until they gave him a job. Steve met Ron Wayne, a guy who had started a company that built slot machines. He became to realize that it was indeed possible to start your own company. Ron Wayne later admitted he was gay. Robert headed to India to embark on his spiritual journey. His company devised of a way to pay for his trip to India. Over there, he met Larry Brilliant, who later became Steve’s good friend. Steve stayed in India for 7 months, but failed to find a guru. Steve was now 19 years ago. People in India used their intuition. Steve felt intuition was more valuable than intellect. Through his mediation, he realized he could harness his intuition more than others. Steve kept meeting a guy called Kobun and embarked on mediation trips. The adoption had an impact on his and he wanted to seek his natural parents. Steve was super confident and wanted to inspire others to do things they thought were not possible initially. This was the good side of the reality distortion field. Woz was the better engineer. Bushnell wanted a single player of pong and got Woz and Steve to design them. Steve kept the bonus from the work and didn’t tell Woz about it. They were actually quite different people. Steve is actually a complex guy with a manipulative side. Eventually they let this issue go. Steve was a guy who didn’t accept no for an answer.

I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door. – Steve Jobs

Then he puts on a tape of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks, lays his head in my lap, and goes to sleep. He had the attitude that he could do anything, and therefore so can you. He put his life in my hands. So that made me do something I didn’t think I could do. – Elizabeth Holmes

If he decided that something should happen, then he’s just going to make it happen. – Elizabeth Holmes, on Steve Jobs

There is something indefinable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve. He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.’ – Nolan Bushnell

The Apple I (Turn On, Boot Up, Jack in)

Machines of Loving Grace. The 1960s were a time of cultural explosion. The hacker subculture were born. There was also a hippie movement. Steve Jobs practiced mediation in the morning. LSD aided Steve in the creation of the first PC. Hackers envisioned a PC and not everything under central control. The whole earth catalog inspired Steve. This was when he saw the phrase: ‘Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish’. Steve gathered a group to discuss about building a PC. Woz thought of a microprocessor and the idea of a keyboard, screen and computer all in one package. The problem were that microprocessors were often made by Intel and would later be incompatible with Apple’s. On June 29, 1975, Woz managed to type something on a keyboard and this was displayed on a screen. Steve wanted to try and sell this product. At first, Woz wanted to give the Apple I away for free. Steve rejected this idea. Bill Gates didn’t like this idea of charity too. Steve wanted to sell printed circuit boards. They had to raise money to fund it. Apple was thus born. They had to think of a name and eventually settled on Apple. Apple denoted simplicity and it attracted the attention of many. Woz left HP after some persuasion to join Apple. Steve-Woz-Ron had equity in the following percentage 45-45-10. As partners were liable for their debts, Ron backed out and received his money back. The two of them were too crazy for him. The audience, except a guy named Paul Terrell, was impressed with the Apple I. Terrell became Apple’s first customer. Woz was shocked by this news. Steve got their friends to help out with the order. The garage was converted into a lab. Woz wanted to sell at cost but Steve wanted to make a profit. In addition to the Altair, there were other competitors. At that time, their product was not as good as their competitors’.

The people who invented the 21st century were pot-smoking, sandal-wearing hippies from the West Coast like Steve, because they saw differently. The hierarchical systems of the East Coast, England, Germany, and Japan do not encourage this different thinking. The sixties produced an anarchic mindset that is great for imagining a world not yet in existence. – Bono, from the band U2

Steve is just that sort of person. I mean, he knew how to talk to a sales representative. I could never have done that. I’m too shy. – Steve Wozniak

Every time I’d design something great, Steve would find a way to make money for us. It never crossed my mind to sell computers. It was Steve who said, “Let’s hold them in the air and sell a few.” – Steve Wozniak

Even if we lose our money, we’ll have a company. For once in our lives, we’ll have a company. – Steve Jobs, to his co-founder Steve Wozniak

I was on one of my fruitarian diets. I had just come back from the apple farm. It sounded fun, spirited, and not intimidating. Apple took the edge off the word ‘computer.’ Plus, it would get us ahead of Atari in the phone book. – Steve Jobs

They were very different, but they made a powerful team. Jobs at times seemed to be driven by demons, while Woz seemed a naïf who was toyed with by angels. Jobs had a bravado that helped him get things done, occasionally by manipulating people. He could be charismatic, even mesmerizing, but also cold and brutal. Wozniak, in contrast, was shy and socially awkward, which made him seem childishly sweet. – Ron Wayne

I never wanted to deal with people and step on toes, but Steve could call up people he didn’t know and make them do things. – Steve Wozniak

We were participating in the biggest revolution that had ever happened, I thought. I was so happy be a part of it. – Stephen Wozniak

The Apple II

Dawn of a New Age. PCs need to be in a complete package, not just the processor. Woz tried to build the Apple II. He created colour this time. This was slow to be released to the market. Steve had to get new sources of funding to build it. Steve was hurt when Woz’s dad criticized him for not giving Woz more of the profit. Steve wanted Woz to take the whole Apple. But Woz refused and knew the power of the team. Steve would help package the Apple II. Steve got someone to design a plastic case for the PC. It was simple, yet elegant. He persuaded another guy to design the power source. They created a switching power supply (alternating current). The PC came with slots which allowed users space to upgrade. Steve looked weird and thin and this frightened off potential investors. Markkula thought about investing in Apple and was excellent at marketing. He was made rich after a stint at Intel. Markkula impressed both Steves and furthermore, he liked the Apple II. He had a strong moral compass as well. This guy had big dreams and wanted to bring the product into the mass market. Markkula pumped $250K into Apple and the shareholding was now Steve (25%)-Woz (25%) – Markkula (25%)- Future Investors (25%). Woz initially did not want to leave HP completely. Woz did not want to leave engineering. After much persuasion, he came on board Apple as an engineer. The company was incorporated in Jan 1977. Markkula was like a mentor to Steve. Mike wanted Apple to live by these qualities ‘Empathy, Focus and Impute (Creating a Good Impression + good marketing)’. Regis McKenna was a publisher for IT companies and had good outreach. Steve was persistent about getting Regis to publish about Apple. McKenna worked with the logo with a bitten apple. ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. They spent a lot of marketing. Both Steves were given wardrobe makeovers. During a trade show, they got a first deal from Japan. Steve was becoming rude to his staff. Mike wanted to bring Mike Scott ‘Scotty’ as the new Apple president. He was brought in to manage Jobs. Steve wanted to be in control of everything. He took offence at not being #1 in the badge number list. Steve was a product perfectionist as well. Steve and Scotty had many conflicts regarding design. Steve was not practical at times regarding his demands. VisiCalc produced word and spreadsheet software for Apple II only.

Mike really took me under his wing. His values were much aligned with mine. He emphasized that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last. – Steve Jobs

He became increasingly tyrannical and sharp in his criticism. He would tell people, that design looks like shit. – Mike Markkula

Steve was too tough on people. I wanted our company to feel like a family where we all had fun and shared whatever we made. – Steve Wozniak

Woz designed a great machine, but it would be sitting in hobby shops today were it not for Steve Jobs. – Regis McKenna

Chrisann and Lisa (He Who is Abandoned). Chrisann was together with Greg Calhoun. She and Greg also headed to India for a spiritual journey. Soon, their relationship soured. Steve got her pregnant. However, he didn’t care about it and didn’t know how to deal with it. He lived in denial. He knew he didn’t want to take care of the kid. Steve didn’t want her to place the kid up for adoption. Steve was 23 then. After the girl was born, Steve named her Lisa Nicole Brennan and left to go back to Apple. Steve, under law, had to pay money to support the girl. He kept admitting he was not the father. Looking back, he regretted how he handled the situation. Steve put aside drugs and his strict vegan diets. Still, he had the child-like streak in him.

I was all in favor of her getting an abortion, but she didn’t know what to do. She thought about it repeatedly and decided not to, or I don’t know that she ever really decided – I think time just decided for her. – Steve Jobs

Xerox and Lisa

Graphical User Interfaces. 210,000 units of Apple II were sold in 1981. Steve didn’t want to live in Woz’s shadow. He wanted to impress others as well. The Apple III was a failure. Jobs wanted to name a new computer Lisa. Bill Atkinson was putting life into ‘Lisa’. He created Pascal, a programming language for the Apple II and to develop a program for tracking a stock portfolio. Xerox PARC’s engineers began to create a GUI. Every pixel would be retained in memory and more computing power was required. Steve was interested in Xerox PARC. Steve allowed Xerox to buy Apple’s shares for a discounted rate and in return Xerox had to share their new idea. Apple went public a year later. Xerox got the worse end of the deal and revealed too much to Apple. Eventually, Steve was amazed by their technology. Smalltalk showed how computers could be networked and how object-oriented programming worked. Apple raided on their idea. It was how Apple used the Xerox PARC idea. If Xerox had commercialized their invention, the whole computer industry could have been theirs. Execution is just as important as innovation. Apple improved the GUI as well. The modern day desktop interface was formed. Atkinson designed windows that overlap with each other. Steve dismissed people who were not ambitious and doubted their abilities in life. Mike Scott and Mike Markkula aimed to control Jobs with a reorganization. This relinquished operational control from Steve Jobs. He was made non-executive chairman of the board.

The Apple III was kind of like a baby conceived during a group orgy, and later everybody had this bad headache, and there’s the bastard child, and everyone says, ‘It’s not mine.’ – Randy Wigginton

‘The best way to predict the future is to invent it. People who are serious about software should make their own hardware. -Alan Kay

“Picasso had a saying – ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ – and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.” – Steve Jobs

Everything you’ve ever done in your life is shit, so why don’t you come work for me? – Steve Jobs to 2 Xerox engineers

I was upset and felt abandoned by Markkula. He and Scotty felt I wasn’t up to running the Lisa division. I brooded about it a lot. – Steve Jobs

Going Public (A Man of Wealth and Fame). By end 1980, Apple was worth $1.79 billion. Daniel Kottke didn’t get stock options because he was paid by the hour. He pleaded with Steve Jobs to give him options. Steve didn’t bulge. ‘Steve is the opposite of loyal. He’s anti-loyal. He as to abandon the people he is close to.’ Steve lost a friend because of this. Woz, on the other hand, gave some options to his other employees so that they could be rich. He even gave Daniel and some others stock options. Morgan Stanley was the underwriter for the deal. By 25, Steve was worth $256 million. Steve was anti-materialistic when young when he pursued the Zen way of life. However, now he had a love for material objects. He tried his best not to let money change him. He set up his own foundation.

I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn’t have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn’t have to worry about money. – Steve jobs

I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house managers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It’s crazy. I made a promise to myself that I’m not going to let this money ruin my life. – Steve Jobs

The Mac Is Born (You say you want a revolution). Jef Raskin wrote the manual for the Apple II for $50. The Macintosh was born. It was a screen, keyboard and computer all rolled into one. Burrell Smith was a brilliant engineer who worked on the Mac. Raskin didn’t believe that if you just had passion, you could design anything you want. Raskin used the underpowered Motorola 6809 microprocessor. Jobs wanted to use the more powerful Motorola 68000 chip. Eventually, he got his way. Also, Steve wanted a mouse whereas Jef wanted a keyboard. Some engineers found Steve very difficult to work with due to his desire to introduce politics and tension. Mike sided with Jobs this time. Raskin was forced to leave. Andy Hertzfeld started to work on the Mac as well. Steve had a personality that convinced some of the top engineers to join the Mac team. Woz had a crash in an airplane and decided to take a break from Apple. Steve wanted to name the Mac the bicycle. This failed. A few weeks later, Jobs managed to push Scotty out as president of Apple. Mike Markkula took over as interim president and Steve was free to explore with the Mac.

I think he likes people to jump when he says jump. I felt that he was untrustworthy, and that he does not take kindly to being found wanting. He doesn’t seem to like people who see him without a halo. – Jef Raskin

Very often, when told of a new idea, he will immediately attack it and say that it is worthless or even stupid, and tell you that it was a waste of time to work on it. This alone is bad management, but if the idea is a good one he will soon be telling people about it as though it was his own. – Jef Raskin

The Reality Distortion Field (Playing by His Own Set of Rules). Steve had super ambitious goals and was living in his own world at times. It is not wise to get caught in his distortion reality field. It was like a force of nature. He had the power to transform others. It was almost hypnotic. He felt special and super rebellious at birth. Just like Gandhi. He felt rules did not apply to him. People’s work were either brilliant or totally shitty. You were either a god or a shithead. Although he might see your idea as being shitty, he might actually come back to you later and claim it was great. Steve could adopt your position as if he was his own. It was essential not to react to his extreme positions and be affected by it. Those who were criticized by him improved along the way. Steve actually respected people who stood up for themselves. ‘This is shit’ actually means ‘tell me why this is the best way to do it.’ Steve had the ability to look at the big picture. The Mac turned out to be a great product. He had a good way of motivating employees.

In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything. It wears off when he’s not around, but it makes it hard to have realistic schedules. – Bud Tribble, on Steve Jobs

His reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision of the future, such as telling me that I could design the Breakout game in just a few days. You realize that it can’t be true, but he somehow made it true. – Steve Wozniak, on Steve Jobs

It was a self-fulfilling distortion. You did the impossible, because you didn’t realize it was impossible. – Walter Isaacson

It’s a common trait in people who are charismatic and know how to manipulate people. Knowing that he can crush you makes you feel weakened and eager for his approval, so then he can elevate you and put you on a pedestal and own you. – Joanna Hoffman, on Steve Jobs

I’ve learned over the years that when you have really good people you don’t have to baby them. By expecting them to do great things, you can get them to do great things. The original Mac team taught me that A-plus players like to work together, and they don’t like it if you tolerate B work. Ask any member of that Mac team. They will tell you it was worth the pain. – Steve Jobs

The Design (Real Artists Simplify). Steve liked clean and simple designs. He poached Lewin from Sony. He really believed less is more. Once again, he was very focused on the packaging. He wanted bright and pure colours, and products with top technology. ‘Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication’. Soon, he was thinking of a flat laptop. He didn’t want a boxy Mac, but rather, a curvaceous one. Steve would keep improving on the model. He didn’t want ovals or rectangles but rectangles with rounded edges. Steve used his typography knowledge to design the Mac. He placed heavy emphasis on getting the fonts right. He also designed the Mac’s calculator. Hartmut Esslinger would be Apple’s designer. Even the circuit boards had to be designed well. Quality and design must be consistent throughout. He kept making people re-do their designs.

I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it. – Steve Jobs, on the circuit boards in the PC

Building the Mac

The Journey is the Reward. Steve dismantled the IBM’s PC and analysed it. Apple was overconfident and tried to taunt IBM. To him, IBM was not innovative. Steve wanted his Mac to compete with the Lisa. It became unhealthy. The people working on Lisa thought Steve was destroying Apple. His software etc was all over closed and not compatible with other products. For the Mac, a user could not open the motherboard. For the hacker, this was bad. He wanted utter control over the user’s experience. He didn’t want people to open the Mac up. Steve was soon featured on the Time Magazine. Lisa eventually died a natural death because sales dried up. Apple had to turn to Steve Job’s Mac. It was 1983. Steve asked weird questions at interviews at ‘Are you a virgin?’; ‘How many times have you taken LSD?’ ‘It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy.’ He didn’t treat the Japanese well. Especially those who had crappy hard disk drives. Steve wanted a disk drive designed by Alps and not imported from Sony. Time was running short. Hertzfeld disobeyed Steve by using Sony instead of developing their own disk drive as the Mac was due for introduction soon. Steve thanked him for it.

If, for some reason, we make some giant mistakes and IBM wins, my personal feeling is that we are going to enter sort of a computer Dark Ages for about 20 years. – Steve Jobs

It would be as if someone off the street added some brush strokes to a Picasso painting or changed the lyrics to a Dylan song. – Walter Isaacson

No, because customers don’t know what they want until we’ve shown them. – Steve Jobs, on the need for market research

Enter Sculley

The Pepsi Challenge. Mike didn’t want to be president and started looking for someone else. John Sculley from Pepsi Co came to mind. He and Steve met a few times. John was excellent at marketing. Sculley was thrilled by Steve’s ideas and visions. Sculley was also a perfectionist by nature. They went on long tours together. Sculley realized he couldn’t reject him. Steve had the uncanny ability to say something which could convince others. Steve and Sculley were incredibly similar. Eventually, it became a recipe for disaster. Steve kept praising Sculley. However, when he couldn’t meet his expectations, things started to go downhill. Steve had big mood swings. The first disagreement was on how to price the Mac. Sculley priced it too high and Microsoft dominated the market then.

Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water (Pepsi), or do you want a chance to change the world? – Steve Jobs, to John Sculley (the future Apple President)

We’ll have to solve those problems, because you’re the best person I’ve ever met. I know you’re perfect for Apple, and Apple deserves the best. – Steve Jobs

We all have a short period of time on this Earth. We probably only have the opportunity to do a few things really great and do them well. None of us has any idea how long we’re going to be here, nor do I, but my feeling is I’ve got to accomplish a lot of these things while I’m young. – Steve Jobs